I stopped. My jaw must have dropped a foot. The one thing in the world I least expected happened. Merlini made a sudden wild dash for the kitchen door, pushed it open, and disappeared!
Flint and Lovejoy stared too for a split second, then jumped after him. Flint had his gun out by the time he reached the door. Outside, another door slammed.
Then Flint’s voice came back. “Put your hands up!”
When I got to the doorway I saw Merlini in the small dark hallway outside rattling the knob of a door that opened into the main hall. Flint’s gun centered on him, but he paid no attention to it.
“Eavesdropper,” he said. “Man I think. He jumped through here and turned the key in the lock.”
Flint hesitated. Then he tried the door.
“Go around through the dining-room,” Merlini suggested. “And point that gun in some other direction. Ross wasn’t talking about me. Hurry!”
But the lieutenant was still skeptical. “Watch him.” he told Lovejoy as he turned, pushed past me into the kitchen, and disappeared through another door.
I followed him through the butler’s pantry, the dining room, and into the hall. Mrs. Wolff, Doctor Haggard, Galt, and Tucker were still in the living-room, but the others had scattered.
The fingerprint expert bent above a paper on which he had neatly arranged the fragments of the flower vase.
“Tucker,” Flint growled. “Get those others back in here. And keep ’em here. Harte, you wait in the library.”
He came in a few moments later with Merlini and the sergeant.
“All right,” he said brusquely, “out with it. Who have we been overlooking? And why?”
The lieutenant’s mood was far from being as receptive as I could have wished. But there was no help for that now. I crossed my fingers, hoped that I’d get the support I needed from Merlini, and let fly.
“We’ve been overlooking the most likely suspect because all along she’s been altogether too obvious.”
“She?”
“Yes. Mrs. Wolff.”
Chapter Eighteen:
Four Questions
I KEPT MY EYES on Merlini as I spoke, curious to know what his reaction would be. It was a complete waste of time. A comment on the possible state of tomorrow’s weather would have brought better results. His face wore the same faintly surprised but thoroughly enigmatic look that it always does when he breaks an egg into the hat you’ve just loaned him and then shakes out an omelette or a couple of ducks.
Flint’s reaction was more pronounced. “Too obvious, hell! For one thing that dry ice wouldn’t have been put in the car very long before Smith made his break. She’s just about the only person who couldn’t have planted it. Haggard had her dosed with Luminal. He had a devil of a time waking her when we went in to question—”
“That’s what you think,” I said. “And I wonder if we couldn’t have the objections after you hear the story? Or would you rather read it in the papers?”
“Okay. Go ahead, but it’s going to have to improve as you go along.”
I gave it to him fast. “Item one: Mrs. Wolff used to be a medium. That’s how Wolff met her. That’s how she knew someone like Smith. Item two: Dudley Wolff was a dictator who had an uncomfortable habit of ordering people around. Mrs. Wolff, who is far too good-looking and too much Dudley’s junior to have married him for anything but his money, caught herself a millionaire and then discovered it wasn’t nearly as much fun as she thought. She wanted to cut loose, but she knew if she tried it by any of the usual means, the resultant and characteristic Dudley Wolff explosion would leave her without a nickel. Item three: The weak spots in Wolff’s armor plate were his abnormal fear of death and his necessity just now for avoiding any adverse publicity. With Smith’s aid she struck at both and put on the burial-alive act that had Dudley believing he’d killed a man. She supplied Smith with the negatives he flashed in front of Wolff, and the phony FBI identification was red herring so Dudley wouldn’t suspect their source. That was—”
“Just a minute,” Flint cut in. “Smith is Zareh Bey?”
“Sure. The Morro Castle death list doesn’t mean a thing. Anybody that turned up missing went on it automatically. Zareh Bey escaped, didn’t deny the report, and changed his name. I don’t know why. He may have been in a jam. Perhaps there were bill collectors on his tail. He hadn’t paid his income tax. There could be all sorts of reasons. The important thing is that he and Mrs. Wolff got together again and went to work on Wolff. And, somewhere along the line she decided that an accomplice can’t ever be fully trusted not to spill the beans. Maybe she knew that Smith was that kind of a guy, that as long as he lived the blackmail might boomerang. So she double-crossed him right at the start.
“She was either supposed to dig him up herself, or she pretended to arrange to have it done. Instead, she left him there. But Smith’s good luck when Scotty got curious and dug into the grave was her bad luck. Her attempted murder backfired with a loud and sickening thud. Smith knew what had happened, and was, understandably, good and mad. He ducked out at first, figuring that as soon as Scotty reported his find and Wolff examined the grave, the game would be up. But nothing happened. Wolff went off to Miami together with his wife. There was no explosion. Scotty had been scared and unwilling to admit poking his nose into something not his business.
“So Smith got busy. He began by scaring Scotty off completely to insure his silence. Then he enticed the Wolffs back with the poltergeist phenomena that he knew Dudley couldn’t resist investigating. When they arrived yesterday morning, he gave them both a lovely sock between the eyes by showing himself at the head of the stairs. He was a professional showman and he staged it nicely—a gradually accelerating build-up and then a smash first-act curtain.
“Dudley was jarred good and proper. He believed in ghosts and he thought he was seeing one of the man he had killed. The shock Mrs. Wolff got was even worse. She fainted, you remember. She knew it was no ghost. She knew that Smith had somehow managed to escape his grave and return in the flesh with blood in his eye. He vanished that first time by scooting through her bedroom, out the window, and down the trellis, outwitting the burglar alarm with the Merlini patented flashlight method.
“Then, sometime yesterday, he contacted Mrs. Wolff secretly, told her that he was going ahead with the blackmail scheme as originally planned except for one thing—from now on she’d take her orders from him. He could crack the whip because all he had to do if she didn’t behave was step out of his ghost role and give Wolff an earful.
“It’s a lovely situation. Neither of the two conspirators trust each other for a split second. They both realize that the other is quite capable of applying a double cross at the first chance. But they have to stick together or get stuck separately. Smith, however, is just a little too confident that he has Mrs. Wolff securely under his thumb. He doesn’t see that his neck is sticking out farther than a giraffe’s. He doesn’t realize that a man who is already thought to be dead and buried, killed by someone else, is a made-to-order murder victim! But Mrs. Wolff did.”
Flint was sitting up now and taking notice, Merlini’s poker face was still operating with its accustomed efficiency, but he didn’t look bored. Sergeant Lovejoy’s eyes were round.
“She played along with him for the moment,” I went on. “She clicked Galt’s camera shutter pre-exposing the film, put his flashlight and the photoflood bulb in the upper hall out of commission, and let Smith, when he came in through her window, into the study with the key she’d taken from Wolff’s key ring. He waited there for his cue to appear for the spirit photo that was to clinch his ghostly status in Wolff’s mind. And then, just when he appeared, there was a hitch. Mrs. Wolff discovered that Leonard was wandering around just below her window. Smith’s usual vanishing technique wouldn’t work. When he streaked back along the hall, she met him at her door, whispered, ‘Nix. Leonard’s outside.’ And there was only one place for him to go—the study. He vanished from the bedroom by the simple devi
ce of never going into it!”
Flint blinked. “And Mrs. Wolff was firing at—”
“Nothing. That was the cover-up. It was misdirection to distract our attention from the study.”
Flint didn’t like it. “No,” he said. “Smith would have made sure his line of retreat was clear before he ever appeared for the picture. He’d have called it off. And I don’t like that whispering. According to your first story you and Merlini went up those stairs so fast—”
“There was time enough for that. And besides, where was Smith the next time we see him?”
“According to you he was in the study. But unless you can explain how he got out again—”
“I can. Smith waits there until things have quieted down enough so that he can ease out. Merlini and I are outside waiting for the same thing so we can come back in. But Dudley Wolff, obstinate as usual, refuses to turn out his light and go to bed. Merlini and I decide to take a chance before Smith does. We come in and pick the lock. Phillips starts prowling around, and Merlini gets caught on the front stairs. I back into the study, right into Smith’s arms. He flattens me, tosses me out the window, and then, as soon as Phillips clears out, makes tracks. He left by the study door before Wolff was shot and just before Merlini came back up the stairs.
“Mrs. Wolff is lying when she says there was a third person in the study. At that point she was trying to talk her way out of a jam, and the ghost who seemed to be so expert at walking through brick walls was the logical candidate to take the rap.”
“The murder gun didn’t leave before Wolff was shot.”
“No. I’m coming to that. The next event on the program is Mrs. Wolff’s trip to the study. She lied about that too. She didn’t go there by accident. She thought Smith was there. She went to see him, possibly to help him get clear. But she was late. He’s just gone. And, a moment later, Dudley walks in and finds her there. He had missed his study key. He realized the that perhaps the ghost wasn’t as ghostly as he’d thought, that someone could have made use of the study after all. When he finds her there he knows who stole the key. And I think he tumbled to the fact that the shooting she’d done earlier was an act. He accused her. He probably threatened to cut her out of his will. That was a little habit he had. She saw all her plans going up in smoke, and she saw just one and only one way in which she could get out from under.
“She had the vest-pocket gun which she had taken from the gun room as protection against Smith whom she couldn’t trust. She took the smallest she could find because it was the sort of thing a woman could carry on her person unnoticeably. She shot him with it. That single direct action solved everything. It silenced him; it prevented any change in the will; it allowed her to collect the inheritance at once; and she was free of him.”
Flint objected, “You’re doing a hell of a lot of guessing as to what Wolff thought and what she thought. And you still haven’t got the gun—”
“Maybe so,” I admitted, “but it holds water. And whether or not that’s exactly what happened, she did shoot him. She’s the only person who could possibly have done it, the only other person in the room with him, the only person in the whole cast of suspects who could have smuggled that gun out of the room in spite of a down-to-the-skin search by experts! Merlini, tell him about Jeanne Veiller. Tell him why Mrs. Wolff, the ex-medium, used the smallest gun in the collection.”
Merlini shook his head. “I was afraid you were building up to this. Tell him yourself. I don’t think he’s going to like it much.”
He was right. Flint didn’t like it at all. When I told him that Jeanne Veiller was a regurgitating medium who concealed her cheesecloth ectoplasm by swallowing it, when I reminded him of the circus sword swallowers who also gulp down gold watches, lemons, and even live white mice, when I insisted that Mrs. Wolff had hidden the gun in the same way, he hit the ceiling.
“First it was an invisible spook who walks through solid walls! Now; he wasn’t in the room at the time of the shooting at all—and Mrs. Wolff swallows a gun! First it’s a human hedgehog and now it’s an ostrich! I won’t—”
“Okay, then you tell me how the gun got from the study to the car. Mrs. Wolff planted it in the glove compartment when she put the dry ice in the heater. She fixed it so he’d die in a traffic smash and take the rap for the murder. The door to the garage is within a few yards of the trellis outside her window. Who else had as good an opportunity? You give me an explanation that fits half as many facts.”
Flint thought about it a moment. Then he turned suddenly toward the sergeant. “Get Mrs. Wolff in here. We’ll see—”
Then the thing that had begun to worry me happened. Merlini, who had been sitting there, far too quietly, letting Flint make all the objections, suddenly came to life.
“Just a minute, Lieutenant,” he broke in. “Ross, are you quite finished? Is that the works?”
I nodded, scowling. “That’s it. There may be a rough edge here and there, but—”
“Rough edges and some holes. Do you mind if I put a few questions?”
“Yes,” I growled, “Knowing you, I do. But go ahead.”
He leaned lazily back in his chair. “There are four questions. Number one: Why oh why, if your masterpiece of synthesis, guesswork, and uncanny deductive reasoning is correct, did Smith tie that andiron to your feet and throw you overboard? You slid past that point in one awful hurry. Why wouldn’t he be content with just knocking you out? Why must he toss off a completely unnecessary murder for no good reason? Or can you give a reason?”
I couldn’t. I should have known he would have spotted that. The point had occurred to me, but so many other things had dovetailed so neatly that I’d let it pass. Besides, I hadn’t had time to give it much thought and Merlini gave me none now.
“Two,” he said. “The mystery of the strangely missing shot. You’ve not mentioned that trap gun at all. I suppose, according to your theory, Smith took it with him when he left the study. But at some time after its theft that gun was fired. It was not fitted with a silencer and yet no one has ever mentioned hearing an unexplained shot. I want to know why not. Answer that one and you really have solved the case.”
He paused briefly and then went on. “Three: If Smith vanished from the study as you say, if he ducked out the door just before I came back up the stairs, where did he go from there? And four: What about—”
“Wait, dammit! You might give me a chance to answer. Smith went across the hall into Mrs. Wolff’s bedroom, out the window, and down the trellis. There was no place else he could go. He certainly didn’t barge into Wolff’s room. He didn’t go into the guest room where Mrs. Wolff was. If he had, she wouldn’t have had to go across to the study later. Phillips was belowstairs at the other end of the hall, so he couldn’t have—”
Merlini nodded. “I’ll admit that. In fact, I insist upon it. He didn’t go past the head of the main stairs toward Kay’s room, Dunning’s room, or the back stairs, because I came up again as soon as Phillips retreated. I’ll admit that Mrs. Wolff’s bedroom appears to be the only place he could have gone. But suppose he did. When he opened the window and aimed his flashlight at the electric eye what happened?”
Flint answered that. “Nothing! He’d put his light on the blink when he cracked Harte over the head!” He turned to me. You’ve got him out of the study and left him high and dry in the bedroom. Two hours later he makes a break from the garage three stories below. Go on, Harte. We’re listening.”
“He had another flashlight on him when Lovejoy found his body.”
“A flashlight,” Merlini objected, “which you have identified as the one Kay kept in her car. But would Smith have it up there in the bedroom at that time? Would he have taken it earlier when there was nothing wrong with his own? He couldn’t have foreseen that he was going to tangle with you. He couldn’t—”
“Okay. There’s a lamp in the room. He took that over to the window—”
Merlini shook his head obstinately. “You’re clutching at s
traws. That lamp’s on the opposite side of the room and there’s no base plug or other outlet near enough to the window. There were no spare flashlights at hand in that bedroom either. I know because I searched it earlier when you and Leonard searched the rest of the house. I’m very much afraid that you’ve pushed Mr. Smith right out on the end of a long and shaky limb. You’ve said that he vanished from the bedroom first by not going into it but by going into the study instead. Then you explain him out of the study right back into the bedroom.
“You’ve left him standing by the window fiddling with a broken flashlight and listening, a moment later, to hell breaking loose in the hall outside. He hears the sound of shots and my pounding on the study door. The hallway fills up with people. A police car arrives and parks in the drive outside, smack at the foot of the trellis. Episode thirteen of The Perils of Mr. Smith will be shown next week at this theater.”
“And yet,” Flint added, “when we carried Mrs. Wolff in and put her to bed he wasn’t there. He didn’t go through the bathroom into Wolff’s room because that’s where we put you to bed. Maybe he went down the drain?”
“Or passed,” Merlini suggested, “as dry ice does, directly from a solid to gaseous state leaving no residue. The invisible man rides again. And that reminds me of the strange affair of the unsteady flower vases. Smith could have caused all the other poltergeist phenomena, but what about the vase that Kay and Phillips saw fall when no one else was there? And what about the one that tipped over in the living-room just now when everyone was there—everyone but the dead man whose fingerprint was on it? That’s question number four. Do you have that answer, Ross, or does the program’s sponsor have to send another encyclopedia to Mr. Z. B. Smith, Brimstone Manor, Purgatory Avenue, Hell?”
No Coffin for the Corpse Page 22
